Welcome!

The University of Waterloo hosted a two day international workshop on the supplementary education sector (June 5-6, 2010). The goal of this two day workshop was to deepen comparative and interdisciplinary knowledge on the impact of supplementary education markets on formal school systems. We invited an esteemed group of international researchers to offer country specific case studies and comparative analyzes of the origins, demand, growth, organizational forms, pedagogy and content of supplementary education around the world. The resulting network generated new research agendas and new collaborations.

Why Study Supplementary Education?
Supplementary education consists of private instruction that 'shadows' formal school content. Providers range from informal and part-time tutors to highly institutionalized, multi-national corporate franchises. This phenomenon is growing worldwide and has many potential impacts on formal education systems: it can serve as an alternate source of human capital, educational opportunity, or educational inequality; it can divert sizeable proportions of family incomes and/or public monies (e.g. U.S. No Child Left Behind Act), and it can be a hidden and unregulated form of educational privatization. Our goal is to shed light on this growing and increasingly influential sector.

Special Thanks:
The workshop organizers, Julian Dierkes, Scott Davies and Janice Aurini, thank the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, The Dean of Arts University of Waterloo, the University of Waterloo’s Office of Research and the University of Waterloo’s Department of Sociology and Legal Studies for their generous support.

News

Summer 2010
The workshop was a great success. We invite you to view the participants' presentations that have now been uploaded.